


When I Am Weak (Your Arms Wrap Around Me)

by SecretEnigma



Series: Lunoct Week [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (yet), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Besithia is Not A Scientist He's an Evil Wizard, But What's the Difference Really, Cat Noctis - Freeform, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fluff, Give them time, Good Titus Drautos | Glauca, I promise there is fluff in here too, It's a Cat Getting Bitten By A Dog, Luna Finds A Cat in the Rain, Lunoct Week, Lunoct Week 2020, Mentioned Titus Drautos | Glauca, Mild Gore, Noctis Wants His Thumbs Back Please, Phoenix Downs (Final Fantasy), Pre-Relationship, Spells & Enchantments, Spoiler It's Not A Cat, THE CAT IS OKAY, True Love Is Not Necessarily Romantic Love, True Love's Kiss, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26682625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma
Summary: For Lunoct Week 2020. Prompts used: Flower Fields/NyactisLuna is just a flower girl and herbalist who dabbles in potions and tries to make enough money to stay comfortably fed and clothed. But that doesn't mean she is unkind to others, and when she finds a skinny, filthy cat in her flower field one day, she takes pity on it.Noctis is the Crown Prince of Lucis, now on the run, presumed dead by most and in hiding from a traitor who dabbles in forbidden magics. He is overwhelmed and lost and hungry and really could use a hand (or even just thumbs, he'll take thumbs).These stories are not as separate as one might think.
Relationships: Lunafreya Nox Fleuret/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: Lunoct Week [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934224
Comments: 13
Kudos: 100
Collections: Lunoct Week 2020





	When I Am Weak (Your Arms Wrap Around Me)

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY FINISHED THIS THING. I literally finished it late yesterday before bed. I was so close to giving up gfhgfdhg. But here we are.
> 
> Fun fact this is NOT the original story I started for the prompto Nyactis, that one was spiraling way too out of control and I realized I needed to set it aside for now and try something shorter.
> 
> Said "shorter" idea then rocketed out to double the current length of the one I set aside. -.- But hey I made it, it's here, and I'm honestly very pleased with it.
> 
> Some background worldbuilding: No modern technology, but there are multiple kinds of magic. The two most relevant kinds are Normal Magic, which anyone can learn if they have enough money to hire a mentor/buy books/go to a magic university (so basically only the wealthy, or the poor who's families used to be wealthy and remember some spells), and Astral Blessings. Astral Blessings are like Bahamut's Blessing to the LCs in the game and work the same way (armiger, warp, gifting magic to their Retinue, etc), but have a few added things to it as well that I can't get into in this one-shot. Astral Blessings are also named after their patron astral, for example- the magic of Lucis Caelums is called Draconian Magic, because it was given to them by Bahamut the Draconian.
> 
> Normal magic has a much broader range of potential application, but Blessings vastly outstrip Normal magic in power and reliability (ie, Normal requires chants and writing that can be interrupted, Blessings only require magic reserves and willpower). There are also very rare High Spells that are "technically" normal magic but can actually only be first learned from one of the Messengers, and as such are closer in power level to a Blessing. High Spells can be passed down word-of-mouth to descendants, but they are really hard to learn/pull off without the Messenger's help unless the learner Really Really Cares about learning the spell.
> 
> There I think that's it. On to the story!

“ **Grmow**.”

Lunafreya swallowed back the startled scream that wanted to rise as she looked up. In the shadows of the tree branches, blue slitted eyes looked back. A flicker of movement and the creature was on a lower branch. Not low enough to be a threat, but enough she could make out it’s form. She breathed out a moment later, in relief and relaxed. It was just a domestic cat, a stray one at that. It’s fur was matted and so muddy she couldn’t tell what color it was supposed to be, and its frame so narrow it overshot “lean” and fell right into “skinny”. She eyed it as it eyed her back, wondering if it was going to run away or try to fight her. It looked mean enough to, though she doubted that was it’s own fault. The poor thing would hardly be the first animal to be abandoned to fend for itself.

Luna looked away politely —animals didn’t usually like eye contact, even if that one seemed stubborn in challenging her with it— and spoke softly as she went back to her task, “I’m not here to cause you any trouble. I’m just here to make some flower crowns.” Above her head, the cat made another irritable noise and she decided to take it as a question rather than a threat from a feral stray, “I like to sell them on market days. They don’t last very long really, but the children like them and the lovers find it endearing to buy each other a crown now and then. It helps me make a little extra on top of my regular wares.”

There was a long silence from the branches above her head, then a slow, rusty meow. Luna looked up at it to see it was no longer hunched on the branch like it was bracing for an attack, but rather just huddled there watching her with a twitching tail, “I’m an herbalist, and a flower girl.” She told it with a smile, “This field is mine, and one of my sources of income. I use the plants growing here to create potions and non-magical herbal remedies, and often I sell the prettier flowers too. My mother did much the same in life.” Technically she had also gotten some money from Ravus this month, a portion of his army wages, but that money she stubbornly tucked away in a hidden little location rather than spend it.

She told herself she was saving it in case of emergencies, but really it was because she couldn’t stand to spend blood money. Not when it came fromRegent Besithia’s coffers. Not when it was given to Ravus for his part in the budding war effort that shouldn’t exist —hadn’t existed until the death of King Regis and the mysterious disappearance of both his heir and his wandering half-brother, until High Councilman Besithia had installed himself on the throne as regent in the wake of the disappearances and insisted the disappearances were the doing of their ocean neighbor Accordo and deserved to be repaid in war—.

A scrabbling, rustling clamor above her head drew her out of her dark thoughts and she looked up in time to see the skinny cat to fall out of the tree from the lowest branch and land gracelessly on the ground next to her with a hoarse yowl. Luna smothered a laugh even as she leaned away in case it lashed out at her for the fall, “Are you alright?”

The cat flailed around on the ground for a minute, like it couldn’t get a handle on its own legs, then rolled over and shook its matted, muddy fur with an angry noise. It nosed its fur, then looked away with a flicking tail. Apparently its fur was so dirty the cat couldn’t even stand the thought of washing. To be fair, if she had to clean herself by licking all that mud, she’d give up without even starting too. Feeling genuinely bad for the poor thing —lost, dirty, hungry, and apparently bad at being a cat—, Luna slowly reached into her basket and pulled out the lunch she’d packed. The cat watched her warily, but didn’t flee when she ripped a few thin strips off of the meat and placed it on the ground near the cat, “There you are. I know it’s not much, but you look hungry.”

The cat eyed her, then sniffed the meat. It wavered back and forth, tail lashing as it half started to eat, then pulled away —likely wary of how close she was, but if she tried to move away now, it would just panic and run—. Finally, it settled and scarfed down her offering, a rusty purr rewarding her kindness. Luna smiled, “There we go. Better?”

The cat gave a low grumble and twitched it’s tail in answer, hesitated, then flitted off into the swaying flowers. Luna shook her head and finished making the last of her crowns, then tucked her regular supply of flowers next to the portions and remedies she’d already packed and walked everything down to the town market. Being a flower girl/herbalist didn’t make **much** —even though the potions sold regularly, she never charged much for them—, but it made enough, and their town was so close to the capital city that it got decent travel from people willing to waste money on flowers, even with the brewing war looming on the horizon. People from town and the nearby areas greeted her warmly, and the children stopped by for a story or two that she had learned from her mother when she was a child herself. She made enough coin to buy some more food and enough fabric to finally make herself a new shawl, then sighed when it started to rain on the way home. By the time she had walked the twenty minute journey back to her small house, the rain was falling in sheets and she was shivering.

She was halfway to her bedroom to change —her family had once been, if not wealthy, comfortable enough to afford a small wardrobe of clothes for their children— when she thought of the cat. It was a silly thought. The stray had to be long gone from her flower fields, and even if it wasn’t, it would never let her help. But it had been so thin, and relatively friendly to eat near her and not scratch or hiss, and it had been so very **small** …

Grabbing her empty flower basket with the lid, she hurried out into the rain again, this time aiming for her flower field. Her clothes were already soaking, and she was glad she hadn’t changed them for dry ones even though she was cold, because the rain was now the kind that could soak to the bone in minutes. Without any real idea of what she was doing or what she **planned** to do, she made for the tree. At first she thought her journey was for nothing. That the cat was long gone, no doubt hiding under a bush somewhere to wait out the rain.

Then she heard a faint, rusty meow by her foot. She looked down and gasped, because the cat was huddled at the base of the tree, so muddy and curled so tight that when its eyes had been shut she had missed it entirely. Blue eyes squinted at her miserably, and a great shiver wracked it’s frame.

She knew then that if she turned and went home without it, the cat was going to die.

“Please don’t scratch me,” she whispered as she crouched down and opened the lid of her basket, “I swear I’m just trying to help. Come here, there we go…” It flinched when her hands touched it, but then it just went limp, letting her gingerly pick it up and slide it into the basket without a struggle. Closing the lid to help keep out the rain, Luna hurried home as quickly as she could without jostling the basket too much.

She got home and rekindled the fire with shaking hands, set the basket down next to the flames and left only long enough to change her clothes before returning to the main room. She laid her wet clothes by the fire to dry, then opened the basket again and lifted out the cat. It still didn’t fight, just hung there as she took one of her brother’s old shirts and dried it off, smearing mud all over the piece of worn clothing. She bundled him up in another of Ravus’s shirts that he’d left behind when joining the military —“They provide uniforms and clothes, there’s no need to take everything” he’d told her stiffly, as if they both didn’t know that he just didn’t want to take everything that was his away from their home like he never intended to come back—, and then sat as close to the fire as she could with the cat in her arms, trying to warm it up.

A few minutes into her efforts, the cat started shivering a lot and it curled up into a tight, ragged ball. Eventually the shivering stopped and … the purring started. Rusty and hoarse from disuse, but alive and surprisingly loud. Luna smiled in relief, taking it as a good sign, “There we are.” She whispered, “You’re going to be alright now. Then as soon as you’re better and the rain has stopped, you’ll be free to wander off as you please.” One blue eye cracked open to squint at her, the purring still vibrating against her arms through the shirt, and the long black tail slowly shifted to curl around her wrist.

Somehow, it felt like a thank you.

She expected the cat to wander off once the rain had stopped and it recovered from its encounter with the cold. But perhaps she should have known better. Over the unexpected three day stretch of rain, Luna had let the cat sleep in one of her older flower baskets with the old shirt as a nest, had fed it bits of her food, and had even dared to warm up a tub of water and give the cat a bath to free it of all the mud —the cat had protested with much wiggling and yelling, but surprisingly hadn’t once tried to bite or scratch, which convinced her that the poor thing had once been someone’s pet—. The cat —a he, she learned during the flailing and yelling and bathing— was still dreadfully skinny, but after her efforts, its fur was no longer a matted block of mud. Instead, his fur was a deep sort of black. So deep that if he sat still in a patch of shadow he disappeared entirely save for his big blue eyes.

Black cats were lucky, her mother had once told her, and Luna relayed as much to her little guest in amusement, since he must indeed have luck to wind up in her flower field when he needed help. The cat just blinked at her and made a low grumbling sound that wasn’t a purr but also wasn’t a growl.

The sunshine returned, and Luna left her window open when she left to tend her fields just enough so that he could wander off when he pleased. But when she came back, there he was, waiting for her in the shirt and basket nest, leaping out to greet her with a yowl that grew less rusty every time he used it. She blinked in surprise that he was still there, then laughed when he clumsily flung his weight against her ankles in something that was supposed to be a rub but felt more like an attempted tackle, “Decided to stick around for the day? Well met then. Maybe you’ll wander off tomorrow.”

He didn’t wander off tomorrow, nor any of the days in the two weeks following that. He took to shadowing her around the house, then later out to the flower fields, then even hitching a ride on her shoulders when she walked to town. People cooed over her new companion, and laughed when she told the story of how she found him —“You’ll never rid of him now,” laughed an older man, “no animal can resist good food and a gentle touch”—, and the children all asked to pet him, which she allowed so long as they took turns and were gentle —her new friend seemed leery at first, but when no one tugged on his tail or ears he relaxed and started purring for them—.

By the time he had been with her for an entire month, Luna decided he was here to stay and that he deserved an actual name rather than just “you” or “cat”. In the light of the evening fire, Luna looked up thoughtfully from her mending and watched her little friend luxuriate in front of the fireplace, his belly exposed and all four paws stretched out like someone had smoothed him out with a rolling pin. She laughed and shook her head, then tapped a finger to her lips, “You need a name.” One blue eye slitted open at the sound of her voice and his ear flicked in her direction from where it was smooshed against the floor. She busied herself mending again as she thought about it, then suggested, “Shadow?” He followed her around like one. The name got no reaction beyond a dismissive tail twitch and she hummed, “Maybe not. Too simple.” She tried a few more names she had heard other animals be given and all of them were ignored.

She wasn’t sure why she was watching for a reaction really, she should just pick a nice name and repeat it until he learned it was his, but he was a very intelligent —if clumsy and often sleepy— cat and tended to react to her almost like he had a solid grasp of human language, and it felt wrong to just pick a name without his approval. Mending finished, she pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them, “Something more dignified perhaps.” A thought occurred to her and she offered, “Somnus?”

That got a reaction, but a poor one. The cat jolted, rolled over and sat up so he could **look** at her with a purely offended gaze. Luna defended her suggestion, “It’s the name of the founder king of Lucis. It’s a perfectly respectable one.” His ears pinned flat like a deadpan, then he turned away and flopped down by the fire again with an irritated twitch of his tail. Not Somnus then. But now she was thinking of royal names, and honestly, he **did** act like such a little prince sometimes —he still refused to lick his fur, yet yelled and flailed in protest when she gently washed him off in the tub every week, and the first time he’d come face to face with a mouse he had actually **run away** and hidden behind her ankles—. A thought struck her, tentative and probably irreverent, and she said, “Noctis.”

The cat’s head whipped around to look at her so fast she almost heard the sound of it and his ears were pinned tight to his head, tail actually fluffing at her like he was frightened. Luna frowned, “Not that one then? I thought it would fit nicely. It means ‘night’, and your fur is dark enough for it.” The ears unflattened and the tail fur slowly smoothed. She could have sworn he heaved a sigh as he stood up and trotted over to her chair. Rearing up, he put his paws on her ankle and meowed up at her intently. Luna reached out a hand and gently rubbed his ears, “Oh? Do you like that name after all? **Noctis**? Is that a good name for you?”

His ears twitched again, then he leaped up onto the arm of the chair and rubbed his head against her cheek, his thrumming purr filling the air. Luna smiled and lowered her knees, letting him jump onto her lap and knead his paws against her dress, “So you **do** like it. Alright then. Noctis it is.” She ran her hand down his back, feeling him arch into it before he tentatively settled down on her legs and she smiled, “That’s the name of the missing Crown Prince you know.”

“Mrow?”

“It is. He went missing … two months ago now I think, the same day his father died.” The purring stopped and Luna stroked his side, “Regent Besithia says Accordo assassinated them both, but … I don’t think I believe it. Lucis and Accordo have been allies for the past two hundred years, and everyone says that trade was never more profitable than during King Regis’s reign. I don’t see why they would choose to break ties **now** , when everyone says that King Regis was a good king and that his son was so clearly set to continue his policies when he ascended.” Her hand stopped, resting against his ribs as she swallowed back tears, “But that is what the Regent insists happened, and no one can **find** the king’s half-brother to take Regent Besithia’s place, and now all the young men are being called away to prepare for war.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “My brother was called away to prepare for war.”

She breathed in slowly and felt her throat tighten, “My brother might die all because of one man’s assumptions, a man who doesn’t even belong on the throne. I could- I could be all alone, the last of my family as soon as **tomorrow** and I’d never- I’d never know until I realized that-. That…” Noctis watched her with soulful eyes as she blinked away the tears that tried to rise. A moment later she decided she didn’t care. She was all alone here save for her cat, there were no townspeople to put on a bold face for, no gossiping housewives to cluck at her for staying there alone when “she had no menfolk around to help her”. She had no one to hide from. She picked Noctis up and held him close as she started to cry, slow and quiet. She half-expected him to wiggle away, he liked shoulder rides but resented being held, but instead he pressed his head into the hollow of her throat and started purring again.

It was doubtless her imagination, but as she carefully cradled him close and let herself cry —for fear, for loneliness, for resentment that her family had already lost so much over the years and now she was at risk of losing the last of it—, she thought the purr sounded fragile and wet, like he was trying not to cry too.

Noctis became a blessed constant in her life over the month and a half that followed. A companion and a listening ear and a purring friend. He always seemed to know when to distract her with silly antics or when to just curl up quietly somewhere and watch her work. He took to sitting on the corner of the table where she made remedies that ranged from non-magical and herbal to potions and small elixirs, watching intently but never trying to sniff or bite or swat at things he shouldn’t. He refused to cuddle with her in her bed, preferring to hunch in her lap by the fire in the evenings, but when she woke up in the morning, it was often to a dozing black lump curled up at the very foot of her blankets. He deigned to leap forward kill a mouse that had startled her while she was working on a potion and then quietly gagged and walked around the house with his tongue partially sticking out of his mouth in the most human expression of disgust she’d ever seen from an animal. She teased him for it, asking if her brave knight was not meant for the work of a humble mouser, and the look he gave her over his stuck out tongue was long-suffering.

He did start to regularly kill mice for her though, lining them up by the door each morning for her to throw out since he absolutely refused to eat them. Luna made sure to stroke his back and thank him for each one.

Luna found herself talking to Noctis more and more as the days went on with no one but the two of them in the house. She didn’t have time to go to town **every** day, not when she had to create wares for the market days and do chores, and the silence that had fallen over the house when Ravus left was something she didn’t want to return. So, she talked to Noctis. About inane things, about what she was making, about the proper ingredients for a magic potion when she herself was untrained in magic. About family things too, pieces of her family history, or memories of her mother and brother.

“We used to be old nobility you know.” She told him once as she checked on her flower field, “Not Lucian nobility. Tenebrae.”

“Meow?”

“Yes, **that** Tenebrae, the one that fell a hundred years ago. Mother says we used to be … high nobility. Perhaps even related to the lost order of Oracles. You know, the ones whose patron Messenger was the Phoenix. I’m not sure if I believe that part, if I’m honest. But … I believe we used to be nobility. We have ancestral spells and chants, not that I ever learned how to do more than recite the words, and we were wealthy … once. Even after we came to Lucian shores, wealthy enough to be educated, and even to have a voice in the Lower Nobles’ Council in Insomnia. But around the time my grandfather died … I don’t know. Something changed. Father had us move permanently out here, to this place that used to be mother’s summer home. I was only a child at the time, but I remember him and mother talking late at night, after they had put Ravus and me to bed.” She frowned as she contemplated the flowers, mind mulling over the past, “After father died, mother began conserving our money a great deal. She started selling the flowers in her field and taught me to help her make potions to sell too when flowers didn’t make enough. Ravus became one of the town Hunters when he was only thirteen. Before we knew it, we weren’t nobility anymore, we were just … average.”

Noctis rubbed against her ankles with a rolling chirp that sounded conversational, like he was commenting on her story. Luna smiled down at him and rubbed his ear, “Not that it matters anymore. I don’t miss Insomnia, even though I miss things like my mother’s pretty dresses or the family library.” He blinked at her with wide eyes and she laughed, “Don’t look at me like that, it wasn’t a **proper** library. That was just what we called father’s bookshelf. He hoarded any book he could, he must have had at least a dozen of them, most of those passed down through the generations of our family.” Her laughter faded into a frown again, “You know, I’ve quite forgotten what happened to those books. I wonder if mother sold them during the lean years…” She shook her head, “Oh well. Come on, lets find some nice purple flowers to make crowns out of. The children will like those.”

It was a week after that little conversation that everything crumbled.

It was late evening, a walk home after a long day in the market, Noctis trotting along beside her for a bit to stretch his legs, his now silky black fur gleaming in the sunset and his tail raised high. Then he stopped mid-step in the road. His tail lowered and his back arched as he turned his head toward the small copse of trees that brushed up against the road and dropped sticks all over it during the windy days. A low noise started in his throat, eerie and furious in a way she’d never heard from him before, “…Noctis? What’s the-?”

Noctis’s growl ratcheted up to a scream of fury as the lone voretooth surged out of the shadows, mouth open to bite her, already naturally lean frame practically skeletal from starvation. Luna had no time to think on that, on how it was likely alone and starving after being driven out from its old pack for whatever reason. She was too busy stumbling back with a scream of fear. She swung her basket on desperate instinct, striking the voretooth across the face, but her basket was empty of anything heavier than a loaf of bread and a small piece of meat she’d planned to share with Noctis when they got home, nowhere near heavy enough to do any actual damage. The voretooth snarled and snapped at the basket, ripping it out of her hands and shaking it angrily before tossing it aside and stalking toward her, more interested in eating her than the little slice of meat in the ruined basket.

Luna stumbled back, heart in her throat. She couldn’t run back to town, it was too far, she’d never outrun a voretooth that long. She couldn’t **fight** , her only weapon had been the **basket**. Bloodshot eyes tracked her every movement as it crouched, preparing to leap, and she had the fleeting thought of how cruel it would be, for Ravus to survive a war only to come back and learned she had been killed by a stray voretooth long before he ever returned.

_Please,_ she prayed as the world slowed down, showing her every muscle moving in the predator’s body as it tensed to lunge, _please, I don’t want to die._

Black and small and **screaming** with a fury that threatened to gut the world, a blur of fur and claws and shrieking rage that crashed into the voretooth’s back and started tearing while the larger animal spun in shocked circles and howled, Luna completely forgotten. For a long moment she couldn’t move, could only **stare** in astonishment as Noctis, her tiny, friendly, clumsy cat that despised hunting mice or getting dirty with a passion, made fur and blood fly as he tore into the voretooth. He sprang back a moment later, every inch of fur fluffed up, back arched, teeth bared and bloody as he raged at the much larger creature. The voretooth snapped at him and he dodged, swatting with his claws even as he danced around those monstrous teeth.

A moment later and she snapped out of her shock, desperation turning into the power to move and look around and run desperately for a stick as long as a crooked walking staff lying by the side of the road. Her rush got the voretooth’s attention again and it chased after her mindlessly, teeth catching on the hem of her dress and making her scream as she fell over —falling over was fatal falling over meant she was helpless, it could **bite her neck** no-no-no—. Noctis crashed into it again, this time clinging to its head, claws raking against one bloodshot eye as he _screamed-screamed-screamed-_.

The voretooth shook him loose with a jerk of its head and **snapped** it’s jaws. Tossed it’s head again viciously and then let go.

Blood and fur flew again.

It wasn’t the voretooth’s.

Noctis had stopped screaming.

“ **Noctis**!”

Luna didn’t remember getting to her feet. She didn’t remember grabbing the thick stick she had been running for. All she knew was that Noctis was so quiet and still on the road and there was blood everywhere and that **monster** had **hurt him** , and suddenly she was the one screaming, the one attacking with bone-rattling fury as she beat the end of the stick against any part of the voretooth’s body that she could reach. It’s shoulders, it’s neck, it’s head, she hit and hit and hit even after it collapsed to the ground under her unexpected assault, even after it stopped howling and flailing and snapping at her. She didn’t stop until the stick was stained red and the creature had stopped moving.

Then she dropped the stick from nerveless fingers and ran to Noctis with her heart in her mouth.

Blood soaked the road and she couldn’t tell how much was his and how much was the voretooth’s. All she knew was that he was just **lying there** , eyes wide and unseeing, breathing fast and ragged —but breathing at all, he was alive, he was **alive** —, and his lower back-.

Somehow, by some miracle of luck and Noctis’s innate feline ability to dodge, the voretooth hadn’t managed to puncture his internal organs when it bit. But it had grabbed the skin and meat and the bones of his lower back and hips, right near the base of his tail, and when Noctis had been thrown clear-.

Luna swallowed back the urge to vomit, blinked desperately past the tears that rolled down her face as she picked him up in her arms and made him wheeze in pain too great to cry out over, “Noctis, no, no, you can’t do this. I won’t let you do this. Please, Noctis, just hang on, hang on you’ll be okay- you’ll be okay just hang on-.”

She ran the rest of the way to the house, sobbing apologies with every jolting step that made the shivering bundle of black fur in her arms whimper with each step. She shouldered open the door and didn’t hesitate to lay him on her work table, heedless of the blood getting on the wood —the red that was on her hands and arms oh **Astrals** there was so much of it—. She scrambled for her medicines, for the potions she kept in reserve —she’d sold all of her elixirs just today stupid, **stupid** to not keep one in reserve all to herself like she did the potions—. She only ever kept three at a time, not wanting to hoard them when money for food and clothes had always seemed more important, but now she cursed herself as she poured all three over Noctis’s back with shaking hands and they weren’t **enough**. The bleeding had slowed, and she could no longer quite see bone, but he was still breathing too fast, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped entirely, and his back was still-. **He** was still-.

“Don’t die,” she whispered through trembling lips, “Please. Please don’t die for me. That isn’t- that isn’t fair. That isn’t **fair** , Noctis! You can’t die too!” Like Father had to sickness. Like Mother had by running into a burning building when Luna was twelve because there had been children trapped inside and she hadn’t been able to stand by and watch.

He gave no reaction to her voice, just whimpered faintly on the table, and there was … she had no potions. She had no elixirs. What could she do but stand there helplessly and watch her little feline friend **die** as the price to save her own life? She’d need something stronger than a potion, but much faster to prepare than an elixir. She would need…

_“And the great firebird said to the woman, ‘you cannot have my feathers, for they would surely burn your hands to ash before you returned to your child’,” her mother murmured as she brushed Luna’s hair, a family story told by firelight before bed, a legend carried all the way from Tenebrae’s far away shores, “‘but I will teach you how to make your own feathers of fire and rebirth, and those you will take to your child and to others like them’.”_

Luna didn’t let herself doubt the memory, didn’t let herself contemplate how **stupid** it was, to put hope in an old children’s tale she only remembered because her mother had told it to her and Ravus all through their childhoods. Because she had whispered it to herself for years afterwards, trying to recapture that feeling of familiarity and comfort even as her mother’s voice got harder and harder to remember. She didn’t let herself wonder if she had forgotten any part of the story after so many years, missed any part of the recipe. She just **ran** to her flower fields, to the hidden little hollow near the center where the one kind of flower she never ever sold —her mother’s sylleblossoms, another remnant supposedly from Tenebrae, grown from a bag of seeds her father had gotten during his travels and over which her mother had cried— bloomed and thrived.

She ripped five of them up by the roots, not caring to be gentle, then ran back inside. She tossed the flowers on the table, then ran to her brother’s old chest and flung the lid open, throwing aside the last of his old clothes and the other personal items he hadn’t been allowed to take with him to the military. With shaking hands, she pulled out the puffs of eagle down that Ravus had brought home after his first hunt, discovered in the empty nest of a tree a storm had blown over. He had joked that they had all the ingredients for Mother’s story now, and Mother had laughed even as she gently wrapped them up and told Ravus to keep them safe.

She picked one of the puffs at random, ran back to the table and shakily prepared the ingredients all while Noctis’s blood dripped slowly onto the wood in larger and larger puddles and his breathing grew more ragged —maybe the voretooth **had** punctured something internally, maybe he would be dead before she finished, maybe it wouldn’t work, maybe-maybe-maybe—. The flowers she pounded into paste with her mortar, every last piece from petal to stem, adding herbs and powders with every vicious pound until it was an unrecognizable mess. Then she dropped the feather into the gooey mass and stirred it thoroughly until the down was matted and sticky from it. The last of her mother’s scented candles she pulled out of her mother’s old chest and set on the table, lighting it with shaking fingers and breathless curses when the stone and flint didn’t work the first three times.

The candle lit. The scent filled the room and made her cry faster. She leaned over the mixture and the matted eagle down and let her tears drip onto it. With shaking hands she smeared her tears across the sticky down, then slowly lowered the feather into the candle’s flame as she choked on the old spell.

“Fire’s heart, fire’s spark,”

“Like life, it someday grows dim.”

“But fire can be rekindled,”

“Where life forever fades.”

“Make life now to be as fire,”

“Make the heart to be as embers.”

“As the phoenix is reborn from ashes,”

“As the fire is rekindled from embers,”

“Let this life be restored once more.”

She dropped the feather into the candle flame, and for a moment she felt nothing but despair as the edges blackened and withered. “Please,” she begged the candle, the world, the Astrals, the memory of her mother, “ **please** work.”

Candlelight turned from soft yellow to brilliant, sylleblossom blue, then to the white of the sun at noon.

The candle snuffed out, and balanced on its top, the soft, puffy, undamaged phoenix down glowed with the same colors as the remnants of sunset out the window.

Luna cradled the down in her hands and felt magic thrumming like the heat of winter hearth fire against her palms. It was impossible. It was magic on a level that had been lost when Tenebrae, the nation of Oracles and healers, had been destroyed. It was magic debated in scholarly circles as fiction or fact and pursued as the ultimate lost secret by the finest schools of magic around the known world.

And here in her little house, outside a little town, Luna had just created one to save her cat.

It was less than a step of distance to move to Noctis’s spot on the table, less than an instant to realize that his breathing was either so faint she couldn’t see it or that somewhere in her frantic preparations it had **stopped** , and then she was pressing the gleaming phoenix down against the wound. Magical fire **blazed** , sinking into blood and muscle and skin and bone, so bright she had to squint to see as it sealed over bone and knitted together ruined hindquarters. Noctis inhaled, sharp and deep and startled, all four legs flailing in surprise as the light faded and her cat, her **friend** , rolled over onto his belly with a confused, dazed sounding chirp, the only sign of his near death moments ago being the smokey grey streaks of fur that had grown over newly made scars.

He stared at her with wide eyes, whole and alive and unharmed if scarred and Luna snatched him to her chest with a sob, heedless of the blood still matting his fur and smeared on her table and arms. She sank down to sit on the floor and rocked him back and forth as she cried. He wiggled in confusion for a second, then settled and pressed his nose against her collarbone, purring and chirping softly in something akin to concern. “Don’t ever do that again.” Luna choked, “Don’t ever risk yourself for me like that again. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear it…” She cried into his fur until it was well and truly dark in the house and cold from the lack of a fire in the hearth. Then, still heedless of the blood on both of them, she staggered upright and carried him to her bed. Settling down on the covers, she refused to let go when he started to wiggle away like he always did at night, “Please,” she whispered even though she knew he was just a cat and could not understand, “Please stay. Just for tonight. Stay where I can feel you. Where I can know-.” Her voice cracked and she reluctantly loosened her hold enough to let him slip free. He turned around and stared at her in the dark.

With a soft chirp, he returned to her arms, hesitantly curling up with his head under her chin and his tail wrapped around one of her wrists as she curled an arm carefully around his back. “Thank you…” she whispered softly as exhaustion dragged her down into sleep, “Thank you, My Noctis…”

She didn’t wake up until it was late morning and the sunlight was pressing against her eyelids through the window that she had forgotten to close last night. She ached down to her bones from yesterday’s exertions, and her body and clothes felt sticky and unpleasant, but she couldn’t find it in herself to regret it when she opened her eyes and saw Noctis cuddled against her, his furry side rising and falling in deep, peaceful breathing. She gently ran her hand down his side and smiled when he stretched out beneath her touch, purring sleepily and nuzzling his nose against her shoulder. Impulsive relief and love for this brave little friend who had stayed with her and fought for her and almost **died** for her filled her heart to bursting and she shifted to very gently press a kiss to the top of his head.

Something deep in her gut jolted, like the sharp tug of a gust of wind, and with a startled meow Noctis started **glowing**. Luna sat up with a gasp as Noctis glowed brighter and brighter from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail and flailed so hard he fell right off the bed.

The thud when he hit the floor was a **lot** louder than any cat his size had a right to make, and a moment later Luna froze in astonishment when she heard a very low, very **human** groan of pain. A huffing wheeze from the floor too big for small cat lungs and then she was scrambling to stand defensively on the other side of the bed at the sound of a rusty, raspy **voice** groaning, “He used the **kissing clause**? Seriously? What the **pyre** , Drautos.”

A breath and a creak of floorboards and blue eyes in a pale face peered over the edge of the bed at where she was standing frozen. Despite the fact that the face looking at her was human, with human pupils and pale human skin and flyaway black hair instead of short fur, the shy blink was so much like **Noctis** that something in her gut eased just a bit, “Ummm,” said the man who used to be her cat, “I can explain?”

“I would hope so,” Luna managed to squeak.

He grimaced and ducked his head even as he sat up enough she could see part of his bare torso over the side of the bed, “Uh, yeah. Sure.” A glance down at himself and his ear tips turned bright red, “Can I … borrow your brother’s old clothes first? I, uh, kinda … lost mine when I got turned into a cat…”

…Oh.

**Oh**.

Luna whirled around, hiding her face in a hand even as she gestured blindly with the other, “O-of course. It’s- over there somewhere. I- I may have scattered some things last night, but there are still some in good condition I’m sure.”

“Thanks.” She heard him shuffle around behind her, half turned when there was a yelp and a thump, then relaxed when she heard him darkly mutter, “Twenty years on two legs and it only takes a few months stuck on four to forget how walking works. Just **great**.” Another creak of floorboards and a low hiss of pain.

She turned around on instinct, blushed red and whirled around again before she could see more than a toned back and long, fresh scars, “Are you alright?”

“…Yeah. Just-. The voretooth chewed me up pretty good yesterday. My hip and back are … sore.”

“I’m sorry,” Luna whispered as she listened to the bumbling steps and the rustle of fabric, “I … I did everything I could.”

A snort that was the human version of Noctis’s usual deadpan sneeze, “You literally saved my life and now you broke the enchantment keeping me as a powerless cat. Don’t apologize for **anything**.” Another long pause, then a shy, “You can turn around now.”

Luna turned around slowly, relaxed when she saw him fully clothed and fidgeting with Ravus’s old shirt. It was too big on him, and it made him look even more harmless and endearing despite being a human who had been her cat a few minutes ago. Luna cleared her throat awkwardly, “So … explanation?”

Noctis- the man- nodded slowly, then glanced down at her arms, “Let’s … go down to the creek. You can wash that off while I talk.” A blink and look down at himself, then a huff, “Huh, guess the blood disappeared when the fur did. Convenient at least.”

Luna followed him down to the creek, torn between suspicion, curiosity, and outright mortification. Suspicion, because he was, well, a human. One who had been enchanted and trapped as a cat until just now, and though in her heart she knew this was the same person who almost died yesterday to save her, the different form made her mind wary. Curiosity, because she wanted badly to know **how** he became enchanted and ended up in her flower field those months previous. Mortification, because- well. He’d been her **cat** until a few minutes ago. She had, very, very technically, been seeing him naked until just now. She had picked him up and cuddled him multiple times. She’d offered him leftover scraps of her food sometimes on top of his own portions. She had let him doze in her **lap**.

…Oh **Astrals** , no wonder he’d always thrown a fit when she tried to wash him.

Luna groaned as she scrubbed her hands and arms in the cold water of the creak, “I want to apologize,” she managed in a strangled tone, “for literally every instance I ever treated you like an actual cat.”

He laughed hoarsely as he sat down on the bank next to her. He rubbed the back of his neck and she was a little gratified to see he looked just as embarrassed as she was, “And I want to apologize for every time I ever **acted** like an actual cat. I tried to suppress the instincts but, uh, there’s only so much you can suppress before you become unable to function in an enchanted body and- and sometimes I just couldn’t- uh- control it. Sorry.”

“Was that what sleeping in … in my lap was? Instinct?”

He turned steadily more red as he looked away, “…Yeah. Sorry. You were … safe? And warm? And it was… I don’t know. I’d just- do it. It was either that or let some stupider cat instinct take over more often than it already did, like knocking over your stuff while you were making potions or trying to eat the herbs you were drying and- yeah. Sorry.”

Luna took a breath, then let it out slowly, “Considering all of the circumstances … I forgive you. Now,” she pulled her hands out of the cold water and settled them in her lap, ignoring the dried blood on her dress, “that explanation?”

He nodded, expression strained but honest, and explained.

His name was Noctis Lucis Caelum, he was the missing Crown Prince of the kingdom that had supposedly been killed by Altissia —Luna gasped, then internally groaned because no **wonder** he had reacted so strangely to the name when she was naming her “cat”—. Almost four months ago, Councilman Besithia had orchestrated a coup using illegal dark magic and traitors among the royal guards and nobles. His father and his father’s Shield had been killed in the initial conflict, though not without inflicting heavy losses, and with Marshal Leonis out surveying the kingdom borders, the only one who could rally the loyal guards had been Captain Drautos, who was obeying the king’s dying order to **get Noctis to safety**. Noctis’s Retinue had gotten separated from him early on in the chaos, but he had high hopes that they escaped with the help of Drautos’s elite unit the Kingsglaive, and in any case he knew they were alive because he was magically bonded to them and none of the bonds had broken yet.

“So … Regent Besithia turned you into a cat while you were trying to escape?”

Noctis sighed, gaze heavy and far away, “No. Drautos did. We were … we were herded away from the escape tunnels and the gates, there were too many to just fight through, not when Besithia had just cast some kind of spell that specifically suppressed Draconian magic and rendered me basically useless.” His expression twisted bitterly at the memory, “Drautos led us instead to the part of the wall where the castle stream flows in, it’s a good backup if there’s ever trouble with the well. There are enchanted bars over it so only water can go in or out, and the enchantments are supposed to prevent any living creature from squeezing through the bars and coming in, but the enchantments don’t do anything to keep small animals from going **out**. Drautos isn’t a mage, but he runs an elite unit who do have mages among them, he’s picked up some tricks. Like animal transformations.”

Luna blinked in realization, “He turned you into a cat so you could escape through the bars.”

Noctis nodded, “Yeah. He was planning to cause a distraction, then escape and meet up with me to remove the enchantment, because when you’re under someone else’s transformation spell you can’t use any magic of your own. But then…” Noctis clenched his fists, “Besithia caught up. He didn’t- he didn’t notice me on the other side of the bars. He must have thought Drautos had already split up with me as a distraction. He had his men pin Drautos down with sheer numbers and then he- the ash-cursed traitor put a **Glauca suit** on him.”

“Glauca suit?”

Noctis’s jaw was tight as he nodded again, “Ever heard of thrall collars?” Luna gasped, because thrall collars were cruel, forbidden things. Enchanted collars of metal that forced a person’s mind into blind obedience, robbing them of free will or control of their own actions. She’d thought they were all a myth, a thing of nightmares and dark legends only.

Noctis bared his teeth and she wondered if it was a side-effect of his prolonged cat transformation or of being part of the Draconian Blessed royal line that made his teeth look inhumanly sharp for a moment, “It’s like that, but it can expand into a near-impenetrable suit of armor on the master’s command, forcing the person inside to not only obey, but to **fight** on behalf of their captor. It’s a forbidden enchantment in almost every country in the **world** , even the high north kingdoms that still have conventional slavery, because it’s said to originate from **demon** magics. All of the Glauca suits were supposed to have been **destroyed** centuries ago. Besithia must have either found one or figured out how to make a new one and he-.” Noctis rubbed a hand over his face, “I ran away. I didn’t have a **choice**. I was trapped as a cat, I couldn’t access my magic, I didn’t know where any of my allies had retreated to, or who all the traitors in the guard were, and Drautos hadn’t had time to tell me what clause he’d put in place to break it. I tried all the ones I could think of that I could do on my own and none of them worked. I … I realized I had to leave the city. The traitors were searching everywhere for me and the risk of them spotting me and figuring out I wasn’t a real cat was too high. So I started snuck onto a wagon that was headed away from the capital city and after that I mostly just … tried to survive. Then I eventually fell asleep in this tree in the middle of a flower field and when I woke up … you were there. And the rest is history.”

He laughed, sharp and almost bitter, “Figures he would use the **kissing clause**.”

“Kissing clause?”

“It’s … like the stories about ‘true love’s kiss’, but without any romance. Those stories come from embellishments of the clause, actually. It’s a loophole put into a complicated spell or enchantment to ensure that if it goes wrong somehow it can be broken quickly. The kissing clause just means that if you’re a student mage and you accidentally turn yourself into a toad or whatever, a family member or trusted friend or even mentor can break it by kissing you. Forehead, cheek, mother, father, sibling, cousin, friend, teacher- doesn’t matter as long as there is genuine affection toward the enchanted by the person doing the kissing. Drautos has known me since I was a **baby** , he’s been my father’s Captain of the Guard since he was in his twenties. He would have been able to use the clause easily.”

“But when he was captured and you could not find anyone else you trusted … you became trapped.”

“Yeah.” He glanced sideways at her, ear tips just faintly pink, “Until you came along.”

Luna looked down at her hands and tried not to blush. She **did** feel “affection” for Noctis. She had loved her little cat friend, loved him even before he had almost died for her, loved him enough to create a phoenix down of legend. Now he was human, and she still cared deeply about him … but there was attraction now too. Noctis was handsome, and his voice was pleasant, and his personality didn’t seem to have changed much from when he was trapped in fur and four legs and she was just now realizing that such a personality in a human being was … a good deal more attractive than it perhaps had any right to be.

She pushed that aside, because now was not the time to get a crush on her cat-that-was-actually-the-Crown-Prince, and raised her gaze, “What will you do now?”

Noctis flexed his fingers with a dark look and another inhuman flash of fang, “Go find my Retinue, grab Cor, free Drautos, then take back my home and string Besithia over the castle gates by his entrails probably. He killed my and my best friend’s fathers, he took my **home** and enslaved my friend with a Glauca suit. He’s trying to send my country spiraling into **war**. I need to stop him. I’ve already been stuck as a cat for too long.” The dark look changed into an almost apologetic one, “I’m sorry I have to up and leave so soon but…”

Luna felt the world slow down as for just a moment, she imagined it. She imagined Noctis getting up and walking out of her life to go save the kingdom. She imagined watching him go, freshly scarred from saving her life, still unbalanced from months trapped as a cat, running off to face the man who had killed his father and taken over the country without anyone on the outside realizing it. A man who knew black magic, had possibly reinvented forbidden, forgotten spells. She imagined spending months all alone in her home, selling her flowers and potions and never knowing if Noctis was alive or dead, just like she didn’t know if her brother was alive or dead right now.

She imagined Noctis dying out there somewhere, never to be seen or heard from again, and Luna spending the rest of her life knowing in her heart he had died and wondering if her presence, her medicines, could have saved him somehow.

She was on her feet before she could finish feeling sick over the mere thought of it, “I’m coming with you.”

Noctis rocked back as if slapped, “Wha- **no**. I can’t let you do that, you’re a civilian, you don’t deserve to get involved in a civil war-.”

“This kingdom,” Luna bit out, “is my **home**. The traitor on the throne is threatening to send the last of my **family into an undeserved war** , and now you are running off **alone** to find your allies and overthrow him without me? I have every right to fight for my home, and my family, and my **rightful king**.”

“You can’t fight!”

“You can barely walk in a straight line on two legs without falling over!”

“What about your flowers?”

“They’re plants. Plants have been thriving without humanity’s help since the beginning of the world and these ones will too.”

“What about-.”

“ **Noctis**.” She snapped in the same tone she had when he was a cat and giving into his feline instincts to cause mischief. Noctis’s mouth snapped shut obediently and Luna knelt down at his side. She reached out and gently cupped his cheek with her hand, refused to admit to the warmth that pooled in her stomach when his blue eyes softened and he instinctively —trustingly— leaned into her touch, “I am a healer. I know how to create **phoenix downs** , that’s what I made last night to heal you. I can be useful to you. More importantly I … I would like to think of myself as your friend.” Her thumb brushed gentle lines over his cheekbone, “Please. You risked your life for me. Do not ask me to do anything less.”

Noctis stared into her eyes, then sighed very softly and shifted to press his lips against her wrist. Not a kiss, not quite, but something similar that made her nerves thrum. Then he reached up and caught her wrist in his hand, pulled it into his lap with a soft murmur, “Alright. …Alright. I can’t argue that point.” He absently traced a pattern into her palm, then looked up at her with the solemnity of a king and the restrained ferocity of a dragon, “I’ll give you access to my magic. I have a spell called armiger, I can store things in it without risk of losing them, we can put a lot more of your herbs and supplies in them than we could ever carry in bags. We’ll grab whatever you think you’ll need and then go, and I **will** be teaching you to fight while we’re on the road.”

Luna took a moment to make sure her voice would be steady when she spoke —now was **not** the time to get a crush on her once-her-cat-but-not-really—, “Of course.”

They got up and went back to the house. Noctis pressed his magic into her veins and they both stared when it was met with soft golden magic Luna hadn’t ever known she possessed. They set that discovery aside for later and Luna passed everything she could think of as potentially useful to Noctis to store in his armiger. Herbs, potion ingredients, her tools, food, her spare clothes, her sewing kit, the other puffs of eagle down from Ravus’s belongings, a knife she used for cutting herbs but could be used to fight with, and an entire swathe of her mother’s sylleblossom flowers, freshly plucked —he told her that ingredients in armiger never rotted or dried out, and Luna would have been fascinated if her nerves weren’t buzzing from adrenaline over what she was about to embark on—.

When they were ready, Luna locked up her house and mentally bid it goodbye. Noctis passed her a short but heavy staff to use as self defense for now and a harness to keep it in place on her back, then held his fingers to his mouth and whistled. There was a pause, then a flicker of magic and a silky black chocobo summon trotted out of the nearby undergrowth by the road. Noctis smiled for the first time in hours at her wide eyes, “Ever ridden a chocobo before?”

“Only in wagons pulled by the non-magical kind.”

He offered his hands to her, “It’ll be easy, Regalia’s a smart, gentle bird. Just get on and then hold onto me, okay?” Luna hesitated and his smile turned just a touch teasing, “Do you trust me?” Luna stared at him, at his blue eyes and black hair and borrowed clothes, and thought of the skinny, stubborn cat that had kept her company and helped her heart and saved her life even when she now knew how truly foolish that had been —for what was the life of a flower girl and herbalist compared to that of a **Crown Prince** who needed to save his kingdom?—.

She put her hands in his, “With my life.”

His expression flickered into something she couldn’t read, then he smiled again and tugged her over to the patiently waiting bird, “Okay then.” He helped her into the saddle, then jumped on in front of her, letting her shyly wrap her arms around his waist before he picked up the reins and clicked his tongue commandingly to the magical variant of chocobo they were riding. The bird chirped softly and took off at a very fast trot, and when Luna pressed closer to Noctis’s back in surprise and nervousness, she almost thought she felt his breath hitch and his spine shiver under her touch. But surely that was her imagination.

Pushing that fleeting thought aside, Luna rested her chin on Noctis’s shoulder to watch as they left behind the only place she’d ever really known and started on what was going to be a long, hard road.

_It was a long, hard road. A road of fighting and hardship, secrets and magic and long lost heritage brought to light. It was a road that led first to Noctis’s brothers, then to her own. A road walked with difficulty, but not alone. A road of danger and loss and hidden feelings that were thought unrequited until they_ **_weren’t_ ** _, and they learned that there really was power in true love’s kiss that wasn’t just a simple spell clause._

_And at the end of that road and all the scars it brought with it, the kingdom of Lucis stood tall and at peace with it’s true king restored and a beloved queen at his side who had once been a simple herbalist and flower girl who hadn’t wanted to leave a scruffy little cat out in the rain._

_But that is, perhaps, a story of another time._


End file.
